A fronte infinitum, a tergo lupi
by nodeerskulls
Summary: That look, it was making me wish to go into the jaws of the wolves of Quilleute. Maybe that's how actual lupines haunted – they gazed so intensely at their pray that it starts lusting after their jaws. Imprint. JacobxOC, non BD compliant.
1. Neutiquam erro

The I Novel of Little Wolf

PROLOGUE

There is a concrete deer right in the middle of the only park in this rain-drenched town. I don't know why it's there, maybe because once upon a time, people here liked to hunt and make macabre displays of their game in public parks. I don't know why it looks the way it does either, one leg forward and its neck stiffly looking at the sky. It's like it's looking at the rain and deciding to flee somewhere where the sun shines more. The only thing I know about it is that I can relate to it: just like me, the concrete deer is scratched and torn at the surface, and so deeply rooted to the place it knows best that even tho it wishes to escape, it will never convince herself to.

I grew up all my life in Woodinville and so did my father and every single one of my ancestors. We Woodinvillians are deeply rooted in place. Some of my dad's family moved into Seattle a few years ago, and the rest of my quirky family never forgave them. 'Ah, the rats have left the ship' they had said, and I couldn't help but resent them for a while.

When my father remarried, he decided it was best to move to Forks, so that the woman he loved would not feel the absence of all she felt deeply for. He had no reason to stay in town, and neither did I. I secretly think he was as resentful to our family as I was, and just like his own petulant teenager, wanted to rebel. I always wanted to move someplace else, but I am a being of familiarity and I had been lackadaisical when it came to actually moving out. Even if Forks wasn't that far away, it was something new, so no complaints from me. I wouldn't get away from the rain, nor would I get any sun, but there was forest, dark and ancient and welcoming, and that pleased me.

My step-mother was Indian, and so was her family, which moved from a small reservation to the city of the woods. Seeing as I was going to live amongst Indians, I decided it was time to choose myself a stereotypical Indian name. Coursing River wouldn't do, since I could barely swim, nor would Howling Wind, since my voice was timid. So I settled for Little Wolf; it held modesty and my whole attitude in life, and it fit me like a glove. My father laughed when I told him that in the car, and my step-mother smiled her Quileute smile, like she knew more than she let on.

I later figured out Samantha did indeed know more than she let on, and that just as the deer in the park, I had my roots deep in cement and would never get farther away than Forks and La Push.

Just like that concrete deer.


	2. Homo homini lupus

/AN/ Author: Sing it, Tiger Lily.

Jacob: I, and all other characters that can be recognized in this fanfiction belong to Stephanie Meyer.

Author: Thank you, Mr. Black. Onward!

* * *

The sand felt slightly warm against the bare skin of my feet, and the wind was caressing my skin and tangling my hair and the sound of waves and seagulls made me feel like everything was me, and I was everything, and that this was created just for me, to offer me solace from the looming presence of the natives.

It's not that I did not like them; I actually founded them quite fascinating, just like I had found the other Forkians. But I guess that was my problem – the Forkians felt like hawks, and the natives feel like wolves, predatory and dangerous and if I mingle with any of them I might get scratched again, so I'm not risking it. I will watch and observe and analyze, because that is the only thing I taught myself to do.

From a very young age, I have been socially inept. I want nothing more to be a wallflower, unobserved and left in peace to pick apart every aspect of human behavior. Maybe my empathic skills were wasted (because, wasn't I supposed to use them with them, not on them?), but I'd rather have them wasted than try and interact. I haven't done it in such a long time, it feels rusty.

My inability to interact has left me with no friends to speak of except my books and my knowledge, and obsessively observant behavior, and I am content with that. I am happy with myself, this little wolf inside a snail shell.

The sand guided me to the bonfires, famined hawks of gold in the howling wind, and when I saw them, huddled against the fire like wolves circling a deer, I thought that maybe Samantha was right – maybe the Quileute held more magic in their blood than the Forkians. Not actual magic, mind you, but she always told me that with such a glint in her eyes that the moment her mouth opened to tell me gorgeously intricate legends, I felt as if they were real. She really was something else.

When they saw me, pale and blue eyed, they stared at me as if I were a lost soul walking into their territory. Only one looked me straight in the eyes continuously, and his gaze held a storm inside it, black and raging and furious, and for a moment I was afraid. He had the gaze of a man of fell out of love, pain and sorrow and love still lingering all mixed into one, and it intimidated me.

The others looked at him curiously, and one of them tentatively slapped his back. That made his attention return to his people, and the man whose hand was on his back whispered something to him with an odd sort of smile. The moment Black Storm (as I called him in my head) locked eyes with mine again, my legs were deeply rooted in the sand. That look, it was grounding me, this deer lost on the beach, it was making me wish to go into the jaws of the wolves of Quileute. Maybe that's how actual lupines haunted – they gazed so intensely at their pray that it starts lusting after their jaws. I had become deviant, I had the urge to run, but his eyes…his eyes kept me into place.

The moment he got up and started walking my way, leaving hard prints in the sand, my deer legs started trembling and it was flight or fight. Little wolves hide from storms under their covers, so I ran. I sprinted to the right, towards the logs that fenced the beach from the paths of old, and like a coward, like the prey, fled to my home, followed by a thundering "Wait!".

When I arrived home, Samantha looked at me in that mysterious way she had, and asked me why was in such a hurry. With my eyes wide, I simply whispered "Storm's coming". I didn't doubt I made little sense, but she seemed to know what I was talking about, because she gave me an odd smile, and told me

"Come, let's close the windows, and read your future in the tarot."

Samantha always held a great fascination with the occult, both inside and outside her native heritage. She loved tarots the most, however, I feared for her – all those who worked with tarot were doomed to a sorrowful life. Indeed, she not only lost her husband, but her two children as well, angels killed in a car crash. They died on the spot. Ironically, she met my father shortly after the funeral, two grieving souls, and when she read her future in the tarot, she knew the sorrow was not over, but it was far far away. She took a chance.

She shuffled the pack in that distinctive way, and motioned me to sit down at the kitchen table.

"Say, Samantha, where is dad?"

"He's still at work."

She put the cards on the table, a simple three spread.

"Ah, that's interesting" she said, and she made me look at the cards on the table, whose meaning I came to learn from her. She made me her apprentice the second month she started dating my father.

The Fool, The Wheel of Fortune, The Lovers. Recent Past, Present, Near Future. New life, new destiny, new love, two halves of one.

Samantha smiled her enigmatic smile. "Did you meet someone today?"

"I…I came across a storm. I ran away."

"Ah, but storms are so beautiful when viewed up close, even tho they might seem intimidating."

When she answered like such, I knew she understood me, however vague I was.

She knew me more than my father did, and more than my mother did, tho I cannot remember her well. Being with Samantha gave me the feeling I was normal, and understood, and that was rare.

"You should go back…see if the storm is still howling." And she winked at me, and went to the phone.

"I'd rather not."

"I'm calling Billy Black. He has a son your age, Jacob, I think you two should hang out. He was at the beach today, maybe you saw him…" and she looked at me in way…in such a way, in the way that made me think Samantha was psychic, or could read minds, or maybe her tarots whispered the future in her ear. I would not be surprised, if any of those theories came true. I scribbled infinity signs all over the paper as she unraveled her predictions of the future in front not me.

Black. Black storm was coming my way, and it smelled of wolf and beach and broken heart. I heard about Jacob Black's heart from my father, from Mike, my friend – Bella, Bella the heartbreaker, Bella who ran away to get married at the age of 18 and died at the age of 19, Isabella who sucked Jacob of all the love in his body, and then threw it away.

We were all at the funeral, her colleagues, her family, and Jacob looked like he was dead inside, as he looked at the closed casket. Never once did we see Isabella's dead body, but just looking at the coffin seemed to strangle Jacob and her father. It was as if they knew something…as if she was gone, never to be reached, but not dead. Samantha had been getting to me, making me paranoid, making me follow hunches that shouldn't be followed, ludicrous and stupid.

When Samantha tried contacting Isabella's spirit trough a summoning- which I thought was tactless;-there was no answer from her. And although for anyone else it might seem normal, for my step mother it was not. The spirits, she said, talked to her. Isabella Swan, she said, was gone, but not dead. But how could that be?

* * *

The first time I properly met Jacob Black, it was three hours from the phone call Samantha did, when he came over to our house and asked me to come hang out with his friends. He looked at me strangely and I saw constellations flourish into his eyes every minute passing, and galaxies being reborn when he shook my hand and I shyly whispered my name. He was the wolf at the beach, black, black storm, and I hoped his jaws would be kept shut. He looked so large, like a storm cloud, and a poor deer facing such could only whimper and be meek. But then again, wasn't meekness my whole nature?

"That's a nice name" he said, and I didn't doubt it. My mother picked out that name, and she was extremely good with assessing how people's personalities were by their names. She once said she'd be content if her child grew up to be the kind of person that thought proper decoration was enough bookshelves. I told Jacob that, to make small talk, and I was nervous, and felt the need to say something as we went on our way to the place he hung out with his friends.

"The name suits you…somehow."

The moment he rubbed the back of his neck with his large hand and started laughing, I became addicted. I fell, and I hoped I wouldn't break a bone or my heart.

This storm, it was one that happened to people once every century, and I was right in the middle of it.

* * *

I had a nightmare that night. I was in the forest with Black, and there was a storm over our heads, and as rain hit us and the deer surrounding us, they and me all turned into stone, and it was all cold. And in the coldness, Jacob Black disappeared in a flurry of red and brown and ghostly white and I didn't know what happened, my neck craned towards the sky and my arm slightly bent, as if it was still sitting on his shoulder. I woke up to find the window open and wolves howling into the night.

* * *

/AN/: Reviews are greatly appreciated, but not necessary. Story alerts are like delicious pancakes :3 Constructive criticism is the cherry on top, and flames will be used to heat the oven to make cake! Also, can anyone recommend me a good beta reader?


	3. Hic habitat felicitas

/AN/:

Author: Sing it, Wardo!

Edward: It is most fortunate that Miss Author does not own Twilight in the least, for if she would, it would've had a very tragic ending.

Author: Thank you, Mr. Cullen! Onward!

* * *

Stars, please extinguish your fires.

Do not light the path my heart desires, but the on which reason sings.

I was reading Macbeth again – something about the tragedy and slow degradation of character made me entirely too fascinated. I remembered Isabella was an avid fan of Shakespeare, which wasn't too surprising. Her love with Edward was the exact kind of reckless teenage infatuation the great author mocked so subtly and eloquently. She knew all the lines from Romeo and Juliet; and all those from Ophelia as well, and that should have been a warning for Jacob Black. I wanted to ask him about her, because he was broken, and only a great or terrible woman can break a man like that. I refrained from doing so however; old wounds need not be stirred.

Two months passed since I met Black. The storm subdued, tempered in a way I never saw it, leaving room for shining sun and warmth, incommensurable warmth radiation from everything he was. Oh, but I was addicted.

Black again. I couldn't get him out of my head; it was as if his presence was a parasite in my mind, feeding off my energy and my soul's peace. He looked at me as if he knew, sometimes, as if he knew I wanted every part of him, he looked at me like he could heat me whole. Poor deer, friend with a wolf, as if the hawks were not enough.

I was having a struggle with the very basis of my being, and Samantha knew that, because she decked out three cards for me again last night; for my father too, but there was no significant change in his. Mine were a total chaos – three spreads of three, changing every time. She was startled, slightly horrified.

"It's as if no part of you knows what it wants…" she whispered.

And she was right.

* * *

Love.

That is the saddest word in a language. Any language. It is also the biggest one, because it has so many meanings and connotations, and destinies, that you cannot count them all in a life time.

I was in love with Jacob Black, and that made me deviant, confused, heated, but most of all, I felt like deer caught in a hurricane, trying to keep my limbs into place as it spun, spun, spun me around, Wind catching ion my throat, heated fingers picking my little fast-beating heart apart.

Touches, albeit infrequent, lingered on my skin; it was as if he was leaving his mark on me. He was incredible. It was possible for the deer to be with the lupine, I thought, the first time he held my hand; as friends. As friends, I repeated to myself, because Jacob Black was not like me, and it was normal for friends to hold hands right? It was right for me to crave his touch, even if he was just my friend right?

When I met him later that night, his hands twitched every time the whole pack of hungry predators interacted with me. They were friendly, and warm, but I was afraid of them. Too large, too…too so not life-sized, too unreachable, and ideal of being I could never reach – normalcy, 'hanging out', not being meek and shy in any way.

I laughed along with them at their jokes, smiled softly at their antiques. It made me feel slightly welcome, even if I still dreamt of being, as Mike would put it, only half as cool as they. They made no mention of Bella, nor of Edward, and if Paul, strong, scalding heat and tongue lashing, begrudgingly happy and friendly, won't-ever-admit-I-have-a-heart-of-flesh Paul tried once or twice, Soft-spoken, calm Embry kicked him the shin ever so gracefully. How could men of their size be so graceful? How could a man of Jacob Black's size be so soft spoken? How could a mere look from his sister tame Paul's inner beast?

I observed them, observed the hierarchy of their existence, just like I did with the Forkians. The pull of power was definitely shared by Jacob and Sam, imposing and authoritarian, both with booming voices and large hands made for gesticulating and perhaps, looking at Emily's pleased look, caressing? Then there were the others – Paul, Leah, Jared, Embry – definitely betas in a way. Imposing, scary, maybe a tad, -dare I say?- bitchy (with the sole exception of the soft worded Embry, being of blue calmness and small timid smiles). Seth and the girls, omegas, and not in the sense of being at the bottom of the pile, but more in the sense that the others thought they needed protection. Despite Seth's size, he was a child, all beaming sunrises and inexistent leprechauns and innocent jokes trapped in a boy too large for his age.

They were Jacob's family, and they treated me like I was part of them as well. The deer had scaled the wolf pack and made itself an omega, and the wolves tickled its legs with their furs and nozzles and it wasn't afraid anymore.

When I arrived home, smelling vaguely of hot, hot fire, my fingers lingering near my face because they smelt of Jacob's cologne (how could the skin on my hand pick his scent up just so?), Samantha smiled at me and told me my future cleared up. However, she didn't tell me how, and she refused to make another spread. She took my hand in hers, pointed to her nose knowingly, smiled her Quileute smile and disappeared in a flurry of motion in her study, locking the door. I smiled softly, rubbing my eyes.

When I laid in bed the other night, I could still feel Jacob's hands on my skin – on my wrist, on the small of my back…my whole being bathed in his perfume, the natural scent that was just so him. Even in the night, as I let the quiet things settle were they should be, I felt a pull, a pull made greater by the soft comfort of my bed that reminded me of the comfort of Jacob's presence.

In the distance, wolves howled. Jacob's memory in my mind, ingrained forever, twitched inbetween gray matter at the howl of the wolf. Even if nothing would happen between us, the howls of the wolves clearly said: Exegi monumentum aere perennius.

"I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze". Jacob's memory, forever ingrained in my mind.

* * *

I had a nightmare that night, blood and broken wolves on the floor, and Isabella Swan in the water, her hands being washed of blood by the waves. Red, blood red, the blue of the water, copper and a halo the colour of the shine of molten copper behind her head. And the wolf howled into the night as he was drowning in the sea that was actually, all Isabella in a way. I was powerless.


	4. Cum tacent clamant

_**Thanks to my wonderful beta Layla James, and the people who faved/alert'd this story so far **_

* * *

We walked into the woods, Jacob and I, and he walked slowly, purposefully, stepping over frail branches and avoiding the ones larger than normal, and he smiled his Jacob smile, and offered his hand to me.

In the woods, he seemed to be home; there was no storm in his eyes, no ever so perceptible tension in his muscles. Jacob Black was a wood child, not the tempest spawn I thought him to be. How could I have ever feared him, and how could I have ever feared the people of La Push, and called them lupine in the worst sense of the word?

Of course, lupine they still were in act and motion, but not in morals, no. They did not fit the negative stereotype like Forkians did.

Jacob's hand was warm in mine, but I was restless, restless as only the imminent approach of change could make me.

Samantha used to say it was foresight, divination; this sense of being cut into pieces and hastily being put back together not quite imperfectly, this agitation and craving for something unknown I had once in a while, just before there was change, or important news. Before they told me we would move from Woodinville, I had been more agitated than ever, worms in my stomach and a wild famished wolf seemed to chew the valves of my heart. I ran, ran, ran, ran from school to home and then in my room ran on the spot and worked out until I dropped, but the restlessness was still there. I had curled up in a ball, thinking someone would die.

Before my mother died, I had been restless, as agitated as a 7 year old child can be, but it was a mature kind of anxiousness, not the sugar induced energy one should have at that age. The news of my mother's death came later in the day, and once the words spilled from my father's lips, everything stopped in my body. I was this 7 year old child that would be deprived from voice, and energy and assertiveness until a new seizure of restlessness would come, for the rest of my life.

Jacob was facing me, his smile vanished, and his eyes a new storm appeared, on that spoke of mysteries and mythology and wolves, wolves snapping with their jaws and lusting for my flesh. The wolves in my heart stopped their activity, as the organ itself, for a tiny fraction of a second when he grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eye, truly; my heart fluttered, a tiny bit afraid of this powerful man in front of me.

"I need to show you something." He told me, and I nodded, unable to speak.

He went behind the bushes, and the bushes stirred and their leaves moaned, and a minute later, a wolf howled. Close, close, ever so close was that wolf's howl, and after the sound came the source. Where Jacob should've been behind the bushes, came forth a russet wolf, and I knew that it was Jacob.

I believed in spirits and demons and angels and creatures not entirely human, and as such, I believed in the Quileute legends.

I studied Jacob. He was far larger than any other wolf, eyes warm and brown, fur the colour of the halo of molten metal in fire, or that of copper. He was far gentler looking that an ordinary lupine, but the movements he made further let know that this man, this shape shifter, this creature, was a predator.

The legends were true, and it suddenly dawned on me why Samantha always seemed to know more than she let on. Ironically, the Wolf Tarot card pack was resting over the place where my ribcage covered my steadily-beating heart. "Give these to Jacob," Samantha said, "and perhaps teach him a bit about them, as I did you."

I held my breath, held my voice, and stroked Jacob's fur, his eyes boring into mine. This man was a danger, a danger to my heart. But he could have it. I would toss my anima and heart to the wolves, and they would keep it safe and loved, for I loved them all, and the one I loved most was now in front of me, transformed.

When he shifted back to his human form, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, he said:

"So…I expected you to be scared, at least a bit.", and then he dropped his hand and rested it unsurely over the other.

I smiled the biggest smile I could, and hugged him, holding on his warmth for dear life. However, what was odd was that I was still restless. If this was not the news or the change, than what was?

With our silences, his lupine and mine human, we claimed each other. Human and wolf, companions. But something still felt oddly amiss...


	5. In media res

_**Thanks to the wonderful Layla James, my beta :D Go check out her profile here :) And thanks to the people that fav'd, alert'd and reviewed.**_

* * *

The wind whispered quietly in the distance, lifting the white drapes of my open window like they were long lost lovers. I felt cold, under all the covers, cold and empty and tired and confused. But not restless; not any more.

Jacob Black told me he had imprinted, on me. The archetypal wolf struck the deer and dragged it into the lair of his heart with strong jaws; the deer, now realizing were it was, powerless and confronted with a fate it couldn't escape, did not realize its heart was bleeding.

I did. I did realize my heart was, figuratively speaking, bleeding, like my palms and knees were, falling into the woods as I ran away from Jacob's distraught form. I did not know why I ran, after all, I did love him, as foolish as that sounds; I always said you can't love people after just a few months. That scared me the most – I didn't know if I loved him because I wanted to, or because the imprint made me to.

My bed was becoming far too large for just me; it felt emptier and emptier with each passing hour I spent denying what happened between me and him. In the night, wolves howled, and it scared me so. The jaws of the lupines of Quileute which I had lusted after had become fabric for nightmares. I imagined them soaring across the woods, their run as a flight, stirring leaves and trees as they fought the cold ones, icy as death, the fight hotter than hell.

Louder than silence, louder then bells, a drumming song in my ears, the constant plummet of my heart in my stomach, the precognitive restlessness, for over a month now. For over a month now I haven't seen Jacob Black.

Realizing I couldn't sleep, I went to the kitchen, finding solace in Samantha's presence. My father was absent again, and I didn't know where he went so late at night, or why. Samantha seemed always distraught in the nights he went missing, and when he came back he hugged her and told her he loved her and she told me in a quiet whisper, after she had a glass of wine, that in those nights she could see wolves in his eyes. It scared me. Perhaps he had a link with the Quileute pack, after all, he quickly made friends with Billy Black, and the previously dusty rifle that he kept as an antique memoir from his father was now always so shiny, and covered in his fingerprints.

"Samantha, would you like to read our futures, and get your mind off things?" I asked, my voice the quietest I could make it, for fear of shattering the beautiful silence in the room.

"Tonight, we will try something different." She told me, and smiled her Quileute smile. She went to the kitchen cabinet, the one that was only hers, were she kept herbs and bones and her sack of runes and tarot cards, for the kitchen was her favorite place; she said it was placed in a spot with good vibrations. Vibrations indeed…as I stood there, watching her rummage the cupboard.

"Do you know why your father and mother named you so?" she asked me, and I immediately locked eyes with her, the second time. As odd as that may sound, I had only once looked Samantha in the eye; her eyes were too powerful, too infinite, and I immediately removed my gaze. That was the first time I met her, and only by her eyes alone I was convinced this woman was right for my father.

"You were a tiny, tiny baby, sickly and frail, ready to die any day, your father told me, so they looked for the perfect name, and they found it."

"Ananta…"

"Infinite, endless. They wanted you to be forever, at least in spirit."

She pulled out something little and she held it in her palm, and she came towards me.

"See this?" she asked me; of course I was seeing it, and I wondered why she asked me, she wasn't one for obvious questions. It was a rune plaque, one of those small stones they put runes on for divination, but instead it had a lemniscate on it.

"This is 'infinity'. I worked in a small ezoteric shop the first time I met your father, years ago, when he was still married with your mother. We were not in love, then. He asked me for a charm for you and your mother, and I gave him this. But it didn't keep her safe, so he came to me, ten years later, crying and spouting profanities, a grieving man. I took him in, placed the charm in my pocket and comforted him. In time we fell in love. I kept this."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I…know what happened with Jacob, and I know you feel in danger and scared and unsafe, but see…this is still uncracked! You are not in danger…the tarot tells me so, the runes tell me so, this charm tells me so. So go, go and listen to your heart for once, Little Wolf."

"But…but I've never…" I started, but she put a finger to my lips.

"I had never loved anyone before your father, and it was scary when I realized I did, but I took the plunge, and I am happy. I have found wonderful people," and she caressed my face "and webbed myself a wonderful story. You need to do so to."

"I can't escape the imprint, can I? This is fake…forced!"

"Oh, it isn't. Some view it as grotesque and forcing and horrible, but I call it just Lady Fate messing with us more than she is usually allowed to. So go."

"Now? It's late." I whispered, and looked through the kitchen window at the infinite darkness outside.

"You are now a wolf too, not a deer anymore. Don't fear the night and its cold embrace." And she twirled in the kitchen, floral skirt a halo around her knees. "Oh, the night…and the stars, and running through the woods."

"Were you a wolf too?"

She giggled. "Oh no, though I wished I were. It seemed so wonderful, so thrilling, so exciting. But alas, no. But enough of me, you're just trying to buy yourself time."

She was right. I rose from the table, and went out the door, followed by her soft laughter and left the warmth in the house. I felt the soft edges of the lemniscate talisman in my palm, and wondered when I picked it up. The howls were getting louder and louder. I felt the tarot cards Samantha gave me a month ago in the pocket of my jacket.

I recognized him by howl alone; I don't know how and didn't ask. He stood there, in circle with other large wolves, probably his friends, the ones I was so acquainted to. They heard me approaching, and when they all faced me, I almost fainted.

"Hi…" was all I managed to whisper, and they looked at me apprehensively before taking off into the night, flurries of motion, fur and emotion, and danger and heat.

"Jacob, I'm sorry, I…" and he disappeared behind bushes, and he came back human and his whole figure was destroyed, in the pure emotional-expressive sense. He was suffering. He was quiet.

"I…I…" and I could say no more, so I came to him and took him in my arms and the coldness of the leminscate stone pressed against his bare back and his bare hands rested on my neck and waist, and my nose was in the little concave place in between his shoulder and neck and he smelled like forest and fur and something deliciously burnt.

All was right with my world. With the corner of my eye I saw a deer sniff the air in the forest, its leg slightly bent, its eyes wide and startled. It heard something, or sensed something, because Jacob tensed too, in my arms; it fled in a flurry of gray.

"You need to go." He whispered urgently. "Go home."

I felt a hammer wedge itself in my valves and hit the walls of my heart.

"W-what?"

"It's not safe…" he said, and nudged me closer to him, despite his previous warning of going home.

"Vampire?" I asked, because I had read the legends, and The Cold Ones did have something akin to vampire lore.

"Yes…" and his face scrunched in pain. It dawned on me, a theory so awful it could not be true. Why Isabella's spirit did not come forth, why the Cullens were such outcasts despite their apparent normalcy, why no one saw her body…

"Is it Isabella?" I asked, and he moaned a little, distraught.

I felt a pain course through my heart. Maybe Isabella had come for him, maybe she realized she loved this wonderful man, and left Edward for him, and she would spend eternity with Jacob. He would run away with her, and I would again be the concrete deer I saw in the park…at least until I got myself together after heartache. And They then would be both cold and dead.

The world would spin off into void, for what will the earth do when the sun is inanimately rotten and cold?

Above us, the full moon. In the trees, Isabella locked eyes with Jacob.


	6. Hinc Illae Lacrimae

"Hey, Jake."

His face contorted as if he were tortured by her mere presence. Which he probably was, really. He inhaled deeply, and I could imagine the scent of vampire invading every pore of his body, every cavity and nook and cranny it could find, mesmerizing him completely.

The moon shone brightly on her skin as she jumped from the tree gracefully, and her hair was brighter, like molten copper, like Jacob's fur – a match. The moon's light behind her reflected off her hair, as hard as her skin, like threads of metal , and it looked like she had a halo. Isabella Swan was another type of Shakespearean tragedy; a new one; a paranormal one – a dead angel; something inhuman pretending to be human again. Just like Eminescu's Luceafarul, she was out of this world now.

"The shade of his face is of wax  
And thou canst see throughout -  
A handsome dead man with live eyes  
That throw their sparkles out. "

I recited this over and over in my head, my body was shaking, Jacob was shaking alongside me, and as I kept my hand on the small of his back, angelic Isabella took a step forward, and he bent his frame in her direction. He was drawn by her, like moth to flame, and perhaps vampires had special powers, and this was hers. In life, in Forks, she attracted attention. In undeath, she still kept Jacob rapt, and if I could, I'd ask her how she did this, how did she make him forget about everything when she glanced at him.

"Where're the others, Bella?" he asked, and I can only stifle a sigh as his warm form gets closer to her, closer, closer, closer, away from me, back to the newest old.

"Hunting. Around."

"You're dead."

"Yes, I suppose I am. I just passed by to say hi. I never got the chance to get goodbye, did I?"

I clenched the infinity stone in my hand, vile and turbulent thoughts passing my mind. Samantha would've called it jealousy. All I wanted was this stone in my hand to fly and hit Isabella and make her go away. Oh, that selfish wench! Just as Jacob moved on, here she comes again, not thinking that perhaps it would've been better for him if she had remained gone!

I came closer to Jacob, and slipped the stone in his pocket, as a reminder

'_I'm still here! Why won't you acknowledge me now that she is here?_' my mind yelled. The part of me I was most used to urged me to quietly walk away and let them sort things out…let him be happy, and have his choice. The new part of me, the turbulent, as black as my hair part, urged me to make my presence more known

" '_Why are you here Isabella?" ask her, ask her, ask her, Jacob!'_ My mind yelled, the voice completely unlike my own.

And then her gaze turned to me, hard and cold, and as she looked at me without the friendship and perhaps love she had for Jacob, her true façade was revealed. Ah, if only I had looked once in her eyes when she was alive, to see if they held the same resentment and claustrophobia! I was sure she regretted now being a vampire, once she'd seen Jacob.

She looks at me coldly, like I am a mere cloud of dust and she asked, her voice like silk over Jacob's skin:

"Who is that?" I trembled, anxious, perhaps a bit frightened.

The normal part of me acted against the new one, and I moved backwards, my knees shaking. Isabella Swan was a predator; her eyes confirmed this.

Woken from his reverie, Jacob turned to look at me, but didn't touch me in comfort, as he would always do when I looked uncomfortable. He just stared, as if he didn't quite know what to make of my presence. And then I knew; knew from the look in his eyes: He had imprinted on me, but he loved Isabella. I may have been his destined soul mate, but he wanted her as a lover.

I knew from the look in his eyes that whatever progress I had made in the romantic sense with him was shattered into a million pieces, and I felt my heart clench. But then I thought…he said I was his soul mate, not the one he loved truly. Maybe a soul mate wasn't someone whom you fell in love with, but a person that changes you or makes you realize who you are. That was what Jacob had been to me – he had awoken in me a slumbering animal, passionate and alive, not like the cold concrete deer I once was. He gave me flesh to interact with the world, and spirit, not only eyes. Perhaps I had changed him in some way. Perhaps that was how this imprinting thing works – you meet the person that will make you better in the most beautiful way, and if you choose to stay with them and love them, fine, if not…just stay close. I didn't know about him, but I needed him close.

"That's Ananta." He said, and smiled an odd smile, the smile he most probably gave only her.

"You imprinted?" she asked, her voice soft, sadness in her eyes.

"Y-"

I cut him off. "No…he didn't."

I didn't know why I had said that….scratch that, I knew why. I wanted Jacob happy. Because, I suppose, that's how love is – selfless. And maybe we could've stayed friends, and I would've remained close with him and the wolves that once hunted deer but now don't, and maybe Isabella never needed to know, and they would love each other and overcome all dangers and barriers, and not have a Shakespearean ending. Isabella and Jacob, vampire and werewolf, in eternity.

The stone now seemed fitting. My name seemed fitting. The odd glint in Samantha's eyes, more fitting than anything. Ananta, "infinity" linking them together. All they needed was a push. I would give them one.

"You…love Jacob, don't you Isabella? I have heard rumors."

She looked taken aback, alarmed –perhaps she feared Edward would hear.

"I can see your heart…and it lies not in the icy plains of Alaska, but in the sound of wolves and green of Forks. Doesn't it, Isabella Swan?"

She looked idly at the ring on her finger.

"Cullen, now."

"By name," I corrected her, "not by heart."

"What are you trying to do?" hissed Jacob beside me. "You know I imp-"

"Maybe imprinting isn't about love." I cut him off. Cutting people off seemed to be a bad habit I had developed since I felt more confident. I knew things. The tarot whispered things to me in the middle of the night. I knew more about them than they did. I kept quiet. It wasn't time to lock my lips tight anymore.

"You love him. He's your biggest regret. He still loves you, and I know you can see it plainly, too, just as I do."

"I'm dead." She says.

"You are a soul, and have a body. The body is dead, but the soul lives. Always will. Feel the energy around you, and tell me you're dead. I dare you, tell me you are dead enough to keep that love in your heart. It crept up on you, didn't it? It tends to do that when it comes to Jacob.

"Once the high of your first love with Edward wore off, you knew who you loved. That's why you came back, didn't you?"

"Yes…yes. But I can't. We can't."

"We can!" Jacob shouted. "I cared what you were when you were with the leech, but not now! You're my Bells!"

"I'm Edward's Bella, and I'm dead to the world now. No use to kill your spirit too. We are of different worlds now." Isabella said, and sighed.

"Goodbye Jake…Jacob." And she disappeared in the blink of an eye. Jacob's hardened eyes turned to me.

"You just had to speak of things you didn't understand, didn't you?" he yelled. I had never heard him yell.

He ran, phased once he was farther in the woods, and left me with the dark, the stars and the trees.

He was angry because he was powerless. Angry because perhaps, he wanted to settle with what he could have, not with what he could get. Isabella was, maybe, too enamored with her life style and her habits to renew them all to be with Jacob. They were both so rooted in their desire to try and move on, they didn't see the gap could be closed. Now, it would never be. The cut was clear – maybe not in words, but in energy. When Isabella said goodbye, it had been final. The energy around me had been cold, and stirred, and then lingered near our bodies. It wasn't turbulent with emotions anymore. They had both resigned to their fates.

Why wouldn't they? Isabella drew comfort from Edward's manners and wealth; Jacob drew comfort from his pack, and perhaps, me. They could never be the same now.

Her god was abundance. His was a ladder he couldn't climb to her. My name was again meaningless to me.

When I went home, Samantha looked at me with that sparkle in her eye, and I knew this whole charade wasn't over. Isabella would haunt me forever now.

I lay in bed, my tarot cards surrounding me. I had read them more and more often as months passed, crossing my reads with Samantha's. They were scattered all on the floor, on my bed and under and in between the sheets, and tangled in my hair and I vaguely remembered I had a mild temper tantrum and tossed them around because they hadn't been clear enough. I was crying. I was angry, because I should've been selfish. I should've held Jacob back, only for me, and should've not intervened. I was foolish to think everything was linked – the stone, my name, and them. I was idiotic to think that only because I had odd strengths and powers and could read the tarot, I knew anything about infinity. Infinity separated them now, and it wasn't me or my name, or the stone. I knew they would never meet again. I wished they would never meet again.

I wish Jacob loved me. Why couldn't he love me? I wanted his real love, not the imprint. I would've gladly given that to Isabella. It was hard to think that destiny forced me on him, and that while I wanted him, he didn't want me in the same way.

I curled myself in a comforting position, and over my soft sniffles, the tarot cards whispered to me. This wasn't over.

-divider goes here-

I was dreaming of the tarot, and The Fool came to me and made me pet his dog, and then the dog turned into Jacob, and he bit at my shins, and The Fool chanted:

"Schrodinger's cat out of the box was a dog, dog, dog

Was a hound, a canine-nine, nine, a wolf, howling wolf

And he bit out your infinity, and you are now stone-less

Infinity finite, Ananta without the A-A-A-A. Ha-h-a-ha!"

And I ran, and then came Isabella, and she disappeared in a cloud of dust and sorrowful look. And Jacob the hound of the Fool ran after the dust in the horizon, but never caught it, so he came back to me and licked the wounds he had given me, and they healed, and he stayed at my side, and The Fool grinned.

I sat next to Jacob-hound-of-The-Fool and I looked at the letters surrounding the animated card and I realized that if I looked at the two o's farther enough (for long enough? From far enough away?) they looked like an infinity sign. Infinity stones fell from the sky; they broke, dust from them coated me and Jacob-hound. It was choking us, so we ran, Jacob-hound and I.

We came across a tower, and the Cullens were on top of it, but then lightning flashed, and it was gone, all rubble and stone and revelations. And everything became clear. Jacob-hound was gone, but didn't leave. I felt him near him. I looked at the destroyed tower. I had a revelation. Lighting struck me.

-divider goes here-

Lightning struck outside my window. There was a storm outside; I felt the energy sweep in waves from every nook and cranny. I felt Jacob outside. As my life became more entangled with his, I also became odder. I opened the window, and the wind was making my hair seem like the blackest of halos.

"Jacob!" I yelled. No answer. "I know you're there. We need to talk." No answer.

I left the window open, despite the hurling rain and the fear the storm caused to course through me. I gathered my tarot cards and apologized for my rude behavior to them, and then curled into bed and waited for Jacob to settle the battle with his pride.

After an hour, the floorboards in my room creaked. I turned to the other side to see him dripping wet and the storm from the first time I met his eyes.

"Hi Jacob."


	7. Facta non verba

AN: Hi guys, sorry for not updating in a million years

I lost my beta's email TT_TT

"You're crazy, crazy!" he yelled, and I felt a slight shiver running down my spine. He was, after all, imposing and frightening when he was mad. I once said I never wanted to risk facing his anger, but I knew at that time that it would've made him happy if Isabella accepted she loved him.

"You're weird, and don't talk normal, and don't even think normal! Why...why can't you just...why couldn't you just shut up earlier, huh?" he whispered, and I felt the untold part of his statement: that even with all those things, he couldn't keep away, because I was his imprint.

I wouldn't guilt myself into thinking he felt these feelings because the imprint compelled him to. The tarot cards whispered to me clearly an hour earlier that they found a pair for me, the one so weird even they think it's too much.

I raised myself on my knees, and got the hair out of my face, and gazed at Jacob with big blue eyes, and decided to be vile for once. If fate gave me a gift, so be it. Isabella didn't want him, but I did.

And even if he battled the want for me in favour of the one for Isabella because I had been foolish, well, I wasn't anymore, and that could be settled.

'Why not be selfish for once?' I thought to myself. After all, fate tossed me in his path, and I was his to keep. He had me. The part that needed working on was on him wanting me, because when Isabella came back, what little progress we made went up and away in a cloud of dust.

"Jacob..." I whispered, and I saw him coming closer, and closer and I knew I had him under my spell. Imprint or not, I deserved this. I deserved this, damn it, I had always been lonely and now I had him. I deserved him. I kept murmuring in my head that what I was doing now, playing into the imprint instead of what would've made him happier, wasn't vile in any way. I wasn't evil for wanting him, and for fighting for him, was I? I mean, even if I had an advantage as big as the imprint, lots of girls fought over boys and tried to persuade them to be with them even if maybe that wasn't the best for the boys. I wasn't doing anything malign. I was, actually, for once, doing something normal: fighting for what I wanted.

I felt the part of me that was unconditionally selfless commit suicide. It killed itself, threw itself off the tower in my dream, and splattered on the hard ground near Isabella's feet. It couldn't act against my want, the want I had for Jacob. I wanted to have him, and him to have me, and if I continued being selfless in every aspect, I would never fulfill those wants.

I got up from the bed, my feet still tangled in wrinkled white sheets, and as the fabric whispered against my skin when I moved towards Jacob, the tarot cards emanated a gleeful energy I had never felt coming from them.

He was immobile, waiting for my move, and I wrapped my slender white arms around his neck and told him sweet things, sweet excuses I would never phantom to come from me, nothings and everythings to soothe him, and soothe him they did. No matter they weren't much true; no matter I would've never said them. I wanted him, and I told them little lies to make him mine. How Isabella left so many times plus one, how I had stayed near him, how he shouldn't fight the imprint, how it felt righter with me, than with Isabella. Didn't it? It was supposed to.

He slowly wrapped his arms around my waist, his scalding hot skin leaving holes in the skin on my back. I wanted him to burn me whole for being such a disgusting, deceiving human being with him at that moment. I wanted him to punish me for being selfish and dragging him from Isabella, who would've made him happier.

"I want you...". My mouth, the traitor. My lips, begging his for more.

And had him, I did. But in the morning, he was gone.

* * *

"We need to talk." He said to me, and I felt the urge to tell him there wasn't anything to talk about. What happened the other night was what was supposed to happen. He should've been happy. We should've been linked. But I still felt the shadow of Isabella linger like dust on his clothes, like dead skin on top of new that simply won't shake off.

Isabella, the living but not alive ghost of the past, haunting him still, even if I showed I was more than willing to give myself to him like she would've never. They were still linked, I saw it in his eyes; I wondered whether there was something much more behind this.

The tarot cards in my pocket felt distressed, I felt their energy vibrating oddly against my thigh, trough the fabric.

"I…I don't think this is right. This feels wrong."

"And with Isabella it felt right, did it not?" I whispered between my teeth, seething, angry, oh so angry, red faced like I never was before. Odd how Jacob Black became from a fascinating storm someone that could hurt me with such a simple statement, with so little effort on his part. Odd how the imprint seemed to have worked more on me than it did on him. Odd how I've transformed into something I promised I never would just to have him, and it isn't enough. Odd how the tarot cards are so alive. Most odd however, is that one is missing from the pack, not to be found.

"This imprint…I was always against it. I willed myself to imprint on Bells, but it never happened. And with you…don't get me wrong…"

"Do not give me, please, the 'it's not you it's me' speech. At least be honest. You don't want me."

"Not as…you know. No."

"But.." I whimpered. "Last night!"

He looked away, ashamed.

"I was a pity fuck?" I whispered, and something inside me trembled and crumbled and got destroyed.

He didn't answer. I felt my eyes fill with tears, my skin trembling, my anger seething. Anger I had never felt, me who had gotten used to nondescript feelings of melancholy and sadness. This was a beautiful sentiment, chaotic and burning hot and I wanted it to stop and wanted more, more more. He made me angry. I liked it. It was fuel, fuel that could bring me out of simply wanting and pulling psychological strings.

There was something in way of me getting what I wanted. The pitiful part in me, the one that wanted me to be selfless, whispered shy, tiny things in the chambers of my heart, like "Let him go to Isabella" and "Don't be angry, it's not their fault you are not destiny's favourite" and my most favourite "Anger is useless, calm down and ask him to be friends.". The new me however, felt its anger increase at these meek thoughts.

Had I not promised I would never be like that again? Had I not come to the conclusion that to have the most important thing, I had to change and be vile? Vile I would be. I locked that little part in me with its tiny voice with concoctions of plans, and it became mute, and came to be just a lingering thought.

Corruption. I had become corrupted. I had become what I hated before. Odd, I didn't care.

Jacob was looking at me, probably trying to interpret what my silence meant. Oh, to be blessed with ignorance. If only he knew the true nature of the filth that my mind became, the contorted cavities of black wishes for revenge and rightfulness and red hot anger, he would become disgusted. He would think of me as inhumane.

Odd how I think these feelings make me the more human. I felt alive.

"You know what?" I asked, in my meek voice, "…that's okay. Now I get we really weren't meant to be, imprint or not, right?"

He looked at me surprised, surely expecting a not so pleasant reaction.

"Still friends?" I asked, and he accepted, and even if all was awkward now, everything was alright. For the moment. And in a few weeks' time, it would be perfect.


	8. Morituri te salutamus

I had learned through the tarot that Bella Cullen, for unknown reasons, prolonged her stay in the vicinity of Forks, logged in a little wooden cabin in the far end of the woods. I had also learned through the tarot the means to have Jacob.

It was sinful yes, my plan, but when it came to the undead, you do have to ask yourself when morality begins and when it ends. After all, they say we are little souls carrying corpses as shells. But if Bella was dead but living, she was just in the way of a proper balance in the matrix, a karma leak, something that slowed down the natural ebb of energy and reincarnation. She was unnatural. Like the other vampires. They were evil, because they, the persons, were trapping the immortal souls that needed to pass on inside them. She, Isabella Swan, wasn't trapping only Jacob Black the person, but also the soul that inhabited her.

As I thought about that, I came to the conclusion all vampires were unnatural evils of the world, gaping wounds in the karmic system that needed to be burned and purified to assure that the karmic dept of their soul would be paid and forwarded. This was justification.

-divider-

Isabella must've been suicidal. I must've been reckless to not have thought she could've fought back. But she didn't. And surrounded by the flames, trapped in that tiny, tiny, inflammable wooden house, she was beautiful. She burned to ashes. I had set her soul free, free to return to its infinite state of reincarnations and karmic payment, its natural state.

I had struck the match; she must've heard it, no doubt, as she must've heard me breathe and approach. I wonder if she hated being a vampire once she had vampirism, realizing what she truly asked for. One match, two matches, the whole bunch, and a canister of gasoline, and the little house went in flames, beautiful, moving, purifying. I had trapped her in a salt circle around the house. She could've stopped me any time; she didn't. Her soul wanted to be set free, as did Jacob. They said otherwise in words, but I knew they did – the tarot told me so.

And she burned, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful flames licking at her face, no screams of agony, just dead silence and the crackling of fire and logs collapsing one on top of another. It was a pity the burning building fell on top her. I was curious what vampire ashes looked like.

In the dead of the night, the fire was burning, controlled, not spreading, and no one knew a thing.

* * *

Jacob was crying on my shoulder, and I, the hypocrite, rubbed soothing circles on his back. His Bella was gone. Oh what a pity, what a terrible occurrence, oh but how did she go? He didn't know. She just up and went. Oh no Jacob, Jacob love, I burned her, I set her soul and you free, but I can't tell you that. You don't know what you want, but you obviously need me now, because I am the only one that is left for you to love romantically without despairing.

Now that my problem was gone, I could go back to how I was. Selfless, pitiful, innocent. The problem is…the tarot cards didn't want me to. And neither did I. I remembered that the card that was missing was The Fool. Maybe I had become The Fool, a corrupted, beautiful, strong version of it. I enjoyed it. Maybe I didn't want to go back.

Oh Jacob, poor Jacob, my Jacob, crying on my shoulder like he did on the shoulder of his father when Bella Swan died and Bella Cullen was born. How beautiful his tears were. How beautiful the peace in me was now that I knew he was mine.

Mine, mine, mine, purified trough flame, and the soul that inhabited Isabella, like a blanked above us, blessing this union.

* * *

I was going crazy, Samantha said to me. I paid no heed to her. Rarely did I pay heed to anything but my own emotions lately.

Jacob and the pack found the ashes, but never posed any questions. Months had passed, and my scent had long fleeted the scene. He came home, that night, my home, and he cried in my arms, and I soothed him, as I was good, and proper, and selfless in his eyes.

After that night, it was as if Samantha knew. She avoided me, she didn't speak to me any more, but I heard her sometimes, whispering in the night, her voice like a touch of something callous that called to the one I was – "I knew we should've never came here…anything revolving around the reality of the legends corrupts the purest of souls."

Like it had corrupted me? Like it had corrupted the pack, twisting their lives apart, stealing the mundane from them, making them imprint? Like it had corrupted the imprint's lives, who, unknown to the outside world, lived in complacency and a tinge of fear and the urge to break free from the chains? I was the only one that felt empowered by the imprint and the corruption thereof.

Odd what people become when they love.


	9. Acta est fabula

The forest was quiet that night, as I strolled quiet trough the woods, trough trees that bent and raised and did not wail in the wind. Eerily silent. The tarot cards hummed in my pocket – danger. I paid them no heed. They had become relentless in humming and buzzing and protesting, their figures becoming more grotesquely twisted day by day to me. They had known me before, and they did not like me now. They cared, but did not approve.

I took them out on the forest floor. Why did I have so much love for these things? I threw them up in the air, freeing myself of their care and wory, and they fluttered in the air like dead butterflies until they fell on the forest floor and died.

I advanced through the forest. My midnight stroll was almost over, but I had hoped to catch a glimpse of the pack, or maybe a lonely fire. It was Beltane, and I was dearly missing the pagan rituals the pagan folk of Redwood did in the spring time. On the night of Beltane, they would light a big fire and they would dance in it, letting the flames lick and caress their skin, giving kisses to the soles of their feet, loving them, not harming them, not burning them. To purify by fire. To become anew. How I missed Beltane. How I wanted a fire now so I could dance trough it and celebrate the new me that had cemented itself in my mind these past few months.

I walked along the path, slowly, not a care in the world. The wind blew, and revealed what was hidden at the end of the path, hidden by foliage. I screamed in horror, my eyes widening themselves, my muscles tensing, my legs shaking. It was the cabin in which I burned Isabella.

But it couldn't be! I told myself. It couldn't, it had burned to ashes with her in it, how could it come back to haunt me, not now, not now when I had Jake so close. I ran to it. I opened the door.

The inside was blank. Only the walls were the same. I advanced, curious, frightened, legs and arms shaking, my breath coming in short puffs. Had the air become colder?

The door slam shut behind me, and I screamed. I ran to it, pushing it, pounding my fists in it, but it was to no use. I was terrified, and trapped, and I could almost feel the presence of Isabella looking at me with pity in her eyes.

I turned around and pushed my back against the door. In front of me, on the other side of the cabin, now unobscured by the shadows, a lone figure, sneering. Thirsty for revenge.

Edward Cullen. Tragical, revengeful, suicidal, deeply frightening Edward Cullen. I screamed and clawed at the door.

I knew what he wanted. He knew what I had done to Isabella, he must've found out somehow, I didn't know how, oh I prayed to all the gods, let me out, let me out, let me out, as I cried and clawed at the door and screamed.

"I know what you did. I loved Bella, she was my soulmate. My everything." He whispered, his voice broken. The grief on his face was broken by his feral grin. "There's no point living on without her. I might as well get revenge on her behalf while eliminating my existence from this world."

I whimpered as he pulled out a can of gasoline from the shadows. I screamed and clawed at the door and windows even more when he started to pour it over himself, when it splashed on the walls. My eyes rolled inside my head in panic when he splashed it over me. I curled in a ball on the floor, like Isabella did on the forest floor so many months ago, and I knew.

The three fold law. Harm none. I had not heed it, and now I was getting back exactly what I gave.

Edward lit a match, and his amber eyes reflected eerily the flame. It fell almost in slow motion, and my terrified eyes watched it spin, spin, till it landed on the gasoline covered floor.

My last fleeting thought had been that I had been happier before, and that the fire was taking away even what was left good in me, not only the new me that I actually did not want, now that I look back at it. Regret. I screamed.

The fire spread, eating away at the wood, at Edward, until it reached me. It ate away the the world, it pained me, oh god it hurt. This was not Beltane fire. This was the fire of Gheena , and the pain I felt was Isabella, the terror Isabella's, the death – Isabella's.

* * *

In the distance, wolves howled as they saw fire spread in their forest.

* * *

At the funeral, Samantha had told her husband that his daughter had been purified, and that death by fire does not occur on its own. He had been angry, furious, and filled with grief, but he would've rather believed it was an accident, a whim of fate, than to think Ananta was murdered, or had committed such a painful suicide. They moved back to Redwood as fast as they could.

The imprint lifted of Jacob as soon as the fire consumed Ananta's heart. It was as if waking from a dream, resurfacing from deep, toxic water. He grieved, like one would grieve for a dear friend. He never seen the change in Ananta, and it was better that way for both.

The Cullen family grieved for their lost brother, and daughter in law for decades to come, and couldn't release the hate they had for the one person that took it away. They never forgave her.

In her soul's next self, Ananta is paying karmic debt.

The balanced had been restored.

* * *

AN: THE END.

I practically wanted to weave a tale of mania, changing and corruption of character, fate, with some pagan elements in it. I hope you guys liked it.


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